


…he comes to her

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: Homecoming [8]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sees the moment he realizes it, the moment it dawns on him that even after his trans-Atlantic grand gesture, she could still say no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	…he comes to her

The eighth time, he comes to her.

She knows something's different when she pulls up to her building.

It defies logic, she knows. Beyond the Doyle fiasco her time in the BAU hadn't required the habits of constant vigilance she's fallen into now that she's back at INTERPOL. Sure, she's basically never in the field, but her nerves always feel like they're on high alert.

She climbs the stairs with her hand on her gun, even though there's a whole other part of her that's the calmest thing in the world. Until she establishes the threat, she most definitely wants to be able to pull her weapon.

But it's the calm side of her that wins as shock freezes her at the top of the stairs.

"Aaron?"

She's not sure why it's his given name that rises in her throat, but he looks hollowed out and exhausted. It's beyond the jet lag that she knows absolutely sucks on trans-Atlantic flights.

"What are you doing here?"

The next few moments are a million forms of surreal. SSIAC Aaron Hotchern, a man totally and perpetually in control, who always has the right thing to say at the wrong time, opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water. She waits, in part because she's utterly stunned but also because she knows it's not her turn. She's said all she wants, all she can. She doesn't have any fight left and if she's honest, it hurts to even have him there.

"Can I come in?" he finally asks.

Like that's any better, but she knows neither of them want to have this conversation in the open air of her outer hall. She has nosy neighbours.

He stands close enough that she can smell him and her body, of course, responds. She hates it and loves it because she's been walking around feeling basically numb since that heartbreaking Skype almost a month ago. She doesn't say anything when he picks up his go-bag, but he must see the trepidation in her eyes.

"I have a hotel booked," he admits quietly and it makes her meet his pained gaze.

Huh, she thinks. Maybe he does understand. He's done more than break her heart, he's broken her trust too and that, more than anything, is what hurts. But he's not making assumptions about her or this conversation which, no matter how small a gesture, is appreciated.

"How did you find me?"

"Rossi," he answers, leaving his bag by the door. "I came straight from the airport."

Those words kick her manners into gear. "Did you want to shower? Can I get you something?"

"You," he replies and her heart does this weird stopping and leaping thing.

She drops to the couch with her head in her hands. So they weren't beating around the bush then, just diving in head first. "Aaron-"

He blows out a breath and much to her surprise, it's enough to shut her mouth. She doesn't look at him though, can't almost. God, this hurts. There's a part of her that genuinely wishes he'd just left her alone to heal in peace. She's starting to think her initial theory about pain being better than numbness had been so very wrong.

"I made a mistake."

She still avoids looking up.

"I made a lot of mistakes."

This time she snorts. It's a pretty sweeping understatement if she's honest. She wonders briefly if he has any idea.

"Emily."

She forces herself to look at him then, both because she wants to see his face, and because she can't help the way she responds to the earnestness of his voice. It's too close, she knows; she's nowhere close to over him. But she also knows that for her own sanity and peace of mind she desperately needs to stand her ground.

"You were never in it alone."

Okay, admittedly, that's not what she'd expected. Apologies, and maybe the vindictive part of her wants to know if he still wanted her. That same twisted part wants the satisfaction of turning him down. But she hadn't expected this.

"I should never have let you believe you were more emotionally invested in us. I should have never let you feel like you were doing all the work. I should have never let you start to think you weren't a priority in my life. I should have made you my first priority."

Second – because Jack will always come first and she actually likes that better – but it's a semantic argument and she can't say she really wants to pick petty fights. Because as hurt and as broken as she feels he's still here. He's still climbed on the plane and flown thousands of miles into an entirely unknown situation to have this conversation with her.

"You didn't have to tell me that in person," she says quietly. "An apology e-mail would have been fine."

He lets out a disgruntled noise and looks properly angry for the first time. "That's not why I'm here."

"You just said it was."

He makes it to her side in two strides – her flat's never seemed so small – and drops to his knees. His hand rises and twitches before he quite obviously settles himself and tucks her hair behind her ear. Her traitorous body responds.

"At first it was too good to be true," he whispers, his hand balling into a fist on his knee. She's pretty sure it's his way of keeping his hands to himself, of respecting her and her boundaries.

"And mixed up in that was everything. Your move here, Doyle, your death, your life, but there you were and how the hell was I supposed to say 'no' when I wanted it? When I want it."

She catches the tense switch. She's a damn linguist.

"But we live in different countries with demanding jobs and lives so I figured just once. And then it wasn't just once and it wasn't just visiting and I was terrified."

"You think I wasn't?" she counters quietly.

"No," he hastily agrees.

To his credit, she believes him. This isn't a man prone to consciously hurting anyone. It wasn't in his nature, on or off the job.

"But I think you fought through the fear and I- I didn't."

It's on the tip of her tongue to tell him it's okay, her mind reflexively cycling through all the true, relevant and logical excuses for his inability to conquer the fear they're talking about, but his hand stops her.

"There is no excuse," he says quietly. "Not for hurting you."

They're the right words, they both know it and her heart speeds up in response. But her mind, the part of her that took months for her to listen to, rebels hard against the painful yearning in her chest.

"Aaron I-"

She shakes her head. She has no idea how to follow that, no idea how to put all of the complicated emotion flowing through her body into words. There's arousal, of course, affection and fear and hurt… There's a part of her that wishes she'd kept some of the anger that coloured the first few days after she ended things. It's an effective emotion to battle a lot of the other emotions tugging her towards giving in.

She blows out a breath. "I don't know what to say."

From his immediate silence, he doesn't know either. He looks just as conflicted – and she's stunned enough by that blatant show of emotion, the way it's written all over his face – torn between wanting to reach out for her or walk away, if that's what she wants. She has no doubt he'd do it too, walk away.

Except she doesn't know if she wants him to.

Because at the crux of it, she loves him. Six weeks is nowhere near enough time to move on from that kind of intense emotion. She's not sure any amount of distance will make a difference, actually. Not that it makes a difference now. With him beside her she's back to square one.

"I'm terrified that you're going to walk away," he says quietly. "And you could. You probably should."

"I did."

That pulls him up short. She actually watches his brain reroute itself. "And I'm here fighting."

Again with the right words. And again she knows it's not enough. "Why?"

"Because you're worth it. Because you've always been worth it. Because these six weeks have been absolute hell without you." He swallows thickly and risks reaching out to her, risks covering her cheek with his palm. "Because I'm in love with you and I should never, ever have let you think anything different."

She's not breathing and she doesn't even realize it until her lungs start to burn. Then she's gasping for breath and her brain is trying to absorb and process it all. He's dead honest, she knows. They're not words he throws around lightly and if that's not enough the look on his face is. It's such a mix of emotions, but she can see all the emotion.

And she can see how terribly it scares him and how vulnerable it makes him.

So she has a decision to make and she honestly has no idea which way she wants to go. She wants him, of course, but she's also gun shy. Her reluctance changes the way he look at her. She sees the moment the realization hits him: she can still say 'no'. She may still do so. It's entirely possible that she'll walk away. In fact, he seems to make that decision for her when he lets go of the hands his grasped in his passionate plea and pushes himself from beside her. He looks broken as he turns and her heart seizes in her chest.

"Aaron," she chokes out and it's only then that she realizes there are tears sliding down her face. She swallows around the lump in her throat. "Don't go."

There's a spark, a tiny bit of tension she sees drop from his shoulders when he turns back to her.

She sniffles then, wipes at her cheeks and sees the way his fingers twitch like it should be his job to wipe her tears. "I don't know what you want from me."

He swallows. "Whatever you're willing to give."

She believes him. She could lock her heart down, give him a small piece and he'd hoard it. But she's also not naïve enough to think that she could do it. If she chooses to give him anything, she'll give him everything and she's honestly not sure about that.

"Anything."

And she's back there again, where she knows she has to make her decision, where she knows she could be walking into pain and heartbreak but she also knows that he's standing there, apologizing and telling her he's in love with her and if she lets that go, she will regret it.

So she stands slowly and turns to face him, forcing herself to relax. "Kiss me."

He stumbles towards her a couple of steps, off balance in a way she's never seen before. "Emily-"

"I mean it," she says, as his hands come to her hips. "Kiss me."

"If I do, I won't be able to stop."

"Maybe I don't want you to," she retorts. Then he's leaning down and his mouth is meeting hers. It's familiar and glorious but nothing compared to the way the tension drains from her body when his tongue brushes her lips.

It's rough and desperate, not a surprise consider how long they've been apart. She doesn't fight his play for dominance, just slides her hands into his hair and holds on as his fingers dig hard into her hips. He doesn't have to drag her closer because she moves on her own accord, pressing closer to feel the length of his body against hers.

He slides his fingers beneath her blouse and she gasps when he actually tears the fabric open. Then those gripping fingers are racing over her exposed skin, like he's never going to get his hands on her after this. She can't get her brain to register anything through the constant bombardment of smell, touch and taste. He's got lips, teeth and tongue trailing down her neck and she's going to have marks in the morning, she can feel it.

She can also feel how much she doesn't care.

Then she's giving as good as she gets, biting as his neck, his ear and his bottom lip when she tugs his face back up to hers. She yanks at the plaid shirt draped over his tee and it drops to the floor. The shirt is next. She's just as desperate as he is to get to skin. Then they're stumbling backwards because he's pushing against her hips. She's the one that steers though, thank God because it is her flat, until he's shoved her against a wall. Her pants are down her legs a second later and she pushes his down too.

His hand slides under her bare thigh and lifts. It's a stretch and she squeaks but the way his erection presses against her core makes any momentary discomfort one-hundred percent bearable. He groans, pushing against her and she feels her breath catch. He's brushed against her just right and head spears up her spine. He takes advantage of the way her head tips back to apply his mouth to the notch in her collarbone.

"Aaron," she breathes, her hands tightening on his shoulders.

He hisses and she loosens up when she realizes she's actually dug her nails into his skin. Speaking of marks. He retaliates with a particularly hard thrust right against her clit. It's a tease though because she knows it would have felt so much better entirely naked. Still she moans and it slides into a whimper.

The sound has something sparking in his eyes and he slips a hand up her thigh until he's sliding his fingers beneath the plain cotton of her underwear – she hasn't cared much since their breakup – and her entire body jolts. He growls at the slickness he feels and immediately slides two fingers inside. She chokes and clenches down hard on the invasion, her eyes dark and hot as they meet his. His face is feral and hard as she fucks her, as he pushers her higher and higher and doesn't let up. His thumb rises to her clit and presses down hard. Air catches in her chest as his fingers send her careening over the edge.

But he's not done there.

She's not sure how he figures it out but when she can process thought again she's already on her bed. At least she's pretty sure that's her bedroom ceiling. It's hard to tell when his mouth is nipping down her body. He bites a mark into the skin above her bellybutton and she finally has the wherewithal to lift her hands to his head. Except, apparently it's the wrong move since he's got them above her a second later.

"Don't move."

Jesus.

She now has first hand experience on that legendary dark intensity at work.

Still, she listens and grips her pillow instead. He flashes her a sharp grin before his mouth goes right back to that mark, nipping down to her hip. He leaves another love bite there, then sucks one into her inner thigh before he finally,  _finally_  puts his mouth on her core. Her hips arch up, she can't help it, and his hands come to press her back down again. She can't move, she isn't sure she wants to, and it doesn't take him very long to send her head-long into another shuddering orgasm.

She pants as he slides back up her body, pausing to bite another mark just above Doyle's scar. But when he gets to her mouth, to the way she can only kiss him back languidly while she waits for her body to come back online, everything changes. His mouth responds to hers this time, letting her lead. When he pulls away he just looks at her for a moment, his hand coming up to brush the sweaty hair from her forehead. His fingers are gentle, reverent a stark contrast to the no-hold-barred way they'd commanded her body just moments ago.

It shifts everything.

The whole mood of this, of them changes, slows. She reaches for him slowly and brings his mouth to hers. She doesn't care about the taste of her on his tongue. This kiss is slow, like they're savouring their time together. This time together and it's not the first time they've taken it slow but it all feels different. Even two orgasms in, she feels like they're back at the beginning. There's heat rising in her body, slower this time, in wide, sweeping waves. His hands slide along her skin and she can feel every single callous, every rough brush of his palm, along her nerves.

They break away and he presses his forehead against hers. His fingers slide in, making her muscles shiver at the barely there feeling and her eyes flutter closed in anticipation. But instead of stopping at her breasts his hands slide up to slide slowly and carefully over Doyle's mark.

"Emily," he breathes, voice hoarse.

Her breath stutters as she feels the play of his fingers over the nerves she can feel and the scar tissue where she can't. His other elbow balances him over her and allows her access to his back, his sides, even his ass. She doesn't grip and tug this time though. Even her touches are soft and reverent, wondrous, the same way his hands are worshipping her body.

"Aaron," she sighs and now his fingers move to play over her breasts.

This build is much slower, steadier, building in waves that pull her under rather than throw her over. It's so slow she doesn't even realize how high he's brought her until she slides into her third climax of the evening.

And he's there in the aftermath, rolling them so she's sprawled over his chest. When she can breathe, when she can get her hands beneath her, she reaches for her bedside table and the protection in the drawer. She feels the way his chest hitches as she rips open the package and rolls it over him.

"Emily."

It's a benediction as she fits him against her and sinks down slowly, so slowly. His head goes back and the veins in his throat stand out while his hands grip her hips. She's still when she's seated, pelvis to pelvis and there is nothing in the world like the feeling of having him inside again. It doesn't make up for the pain and the heartache, but she can't help the newness of the feeling, the breaking of her expectations. She gets to have him again when she was definitely sure she wouldn't.

"I missed you," he tells her and she wonders if he's saying it to keep himself from just letting go. "Every day I missed you. Every day I couldn't talk to you, couldn't see you, couldn't touch you. I missed you."

Her breath catches, stutters as she braces herself on his chest and lifts herself off of him. He groans and his fingers twitch against her hips as she slides back down.

"I miss having you near," he groans as she sets a slow, intense rhythm. He keeps talking, an overwhelming experience since he's never done it before. Filthy words over phone lines were one thing and something they've most definitely played with, but this isn't just talk. He tells her that she's beautiful, that she's wonderful, that he's lucky to have her in his life especially after what he's done. There are tears in her eyes, tears that leak down over her cheeks.

"I love you," he says and she can see his eyes glazing, can feel the way he's finding it harder and harder to hold on with her increasing speed. "I love you, Emily."

She teeters over the edge again, an absolute surprise to her, and takes him with her.

Then the sobs take hold in earnest.

Physically and emotionally spent, she curls into him and sobs, lets her body shake with adrenaline and emotion drag her under. His arms come up, hold her tight, stroke through her hair and over her back. He tries to shush her, but doesn't seem any steadier than she does if his own shaky breathing is any indication.

"I love you," she finally says into his shoulder. "I still love you."

His arms tighten around her. "Emily."

She manages to raise her head. "I do."

He cups her face. "Maybe you shouldn't."

She takes a deep breath and leaps. Again.

"Don't screw it up this time."

His smile is radiant and wondrous and her chest cracks open because for the first time she doesn't feel hollow and lonely.

She feels like they're in this together.

For real.


End file.
